Dover needs the audacity of Udacity

Monday

May 13, 2013 at 3:15 AM

Higher education is broken with increasingly higher costs for both students and our society at large. Education is no longer a one-time event but a lifelong experience. Education should be less passive listening (no long lectures) and more active doing. Education should empower students to succeed not just in school but in life.

— www.udacity.com

As a result of the recent passing of Dover School Board member Dr. Ken Appel, anyone interested in filling the remaining seven months of his term is being asked to apply, care of School Board Chair Rocky D’Andrea (r.d’andrea@dover.k12.nh.us) or Superintendent Jean Briggs Badger (j.briggsbadger@dover.k12.nh.us).

The deadline for submissions is May 15, with three finalists to be announced at a special session of the School Board on May 20.

For those who may apply for the position and those who will whittle the field, we offer some thoughts.

Editorially, we have expressed concern a majority of the board’s thinking is not challenged often enough and hard enough. Our concerns range from how the budget is formulated to how the board plans to meet the educational challenges of the 21st century. We repeatedly see a board all too married to the old ways, at times blind to the finite dollars taxpayers can spend. Meanwhile, test scores and other measures of educational excellence show less than acceptable progress (http://tinyurl.com/How-good-is-good).

While one new board member won’t change perceptions and practices overnight, a new face could begin the process. This means whoever is appointed must be willing and able to challenge existing practices. Put another way, the newcomer to the board should be a bit of a contrarian, always asking why and if there is a better way.

Vision is also important. Not the kind you need to read a book, but the kind you need to take advantage of innovative teaching methods and modern technology, as Udacity does free and online.

This is not to say one new member is going to bring the Dover School System into the 21st century overnight. But unless there is a vision — a dreamer of dreams, if you will — the mistakes of the past will continue. School budgets will be rooted in brick-and-mortar thinking rather than looking to capture the future as Googles’ Sebastian Thrun is helping to do with Udacity, which aims to “bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world.”

We urge readers to spend some time at Udacity.com. Read of its founding, its founders, its mission and its vision. Then decide what it is you should demand of the Dover School Board and any new member.

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Editor’s note: “Udacity was born out of a Stanford University experiment in which Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online to anyone, for free. Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled and not much later, Udacity was born. Now we’re a growing team of educators and engineers on a mission to change the future of education. By making high-quality classes affordable and accessible for students across the globe ...”